WITH their new single Your Love Alone Is Not Enough heading towards the top of the charts the Manics can be confident of a much heralded return to form.

This sell-out tour sees the Valleys' threesome going back to their roots with a series of smaller venues like the Civic.

It also allows them the opportunity to indulge in some acoustic material with singer James Dean Bradfield performing This Is Yesterday and No Surface All Feeling.

They also travelled back to the days when four members of the band took to the stage.

Bassist Nicky Wire paid homage to the missing Richey Edwards before the band performed Little Baby Nothing from 1992.

There were plenty of more modern anthems such as A Design For Life, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will be Next, Everything Must Go and Motorcycle Emptiness plus a smattering of material from the newly released album Send Away The Tigers.

Sadly, during these tunes, they were sometimes drowned out by a wall of screaming guitars.

But all in all it was a confident return after an absence of two years and although Bradfield apologised for the lack of encore due to time constraints, I doubt many felt short-changed.